Manufactured by Accles & Shelvoke Ltd in England, the Cable Spiker Safety Tool is a high quality, durable safety tool used worldwide to positively ground out a wide array of power cables. The Cable Spiker’s cartridge design allows the user to remotely drive a chisel shaped spike through the power cable, short circuiting the power and rendering the cable dead.

When it is intended to work on any Electrical Power Cable, either for the purpose of carrying out repairs or for tapping or arranging additional feeders, it is vital that special precautions be taken to secure the safety of the employees.

After the cable has been made dead and connected to earth at the point of supply, the cable is cut; usually by means of hacksaw or cutters.

It often happens that the cable to be cut is distant from the circuit disconnect, grouped with other cables and sometimes buried in the ground. In order to avoid any possibility of a mistake and a “live” cable being cut most authorities insist that a sequential rigid four-step procedure be followed which requires the disconnection of power at both circuit ends, identification of cable markers, electronic instrumentation signal checks, and cable mechanical spiking.

The authorities make the final step mandatory which requires that a wide iron spike be driven, either with a hammer or an extended stick into the cable intended to be cut before allowing further work to proceed. If by any mischance a “live” cable is spiked, the resulting high magnitude short circuit current should trip out the feeder circuit breaker.

This method was somewhat crude and there is grave danger to the employee carrying out the spiking operation, owing to the sudden thrust of substantial electrical fault energy capable of exploding the cable and creating a high velocity deadly spray of conductor, shield and/or sheath metal fragments. Even the sight of a fault flashover can cause permanent blindness.

In order to enable the spiking operation to be carried out in perfect safety, the Cable Spiker Safety tool has the great advantage that it can be remotely controlled at the moment of firing by means of a lanyard (rope) release.

Therefore, the operator is able to stand at a point of safety and if by chance a “live” cable is spiked, the damage will be local to the cable.

As the speed of penetration of the spiking chisel is so rapid, it has been found in practice that even if a “live” cable is spiked, usually no damage to the cable spiker results. If however, the fault current happens to be extremely high, it may be that the actual spiking chisel itself may suffer, but yet be capable of tripping a normally operating breaker. This chisel is, of course, easily replaceable and a spare can be fitted in a matter of seconds.